Assassin's Creed Revelations - Gold Edition

More and more new games every year are sequels, so I guess the next logical step is enormous collections of previously released games. Bethesda announced at QuakeCon that every Elder Scrolls game would be available, and now Ubisoft is following suit with the Assassin’s Creed Heritage Collection. Available on November 8, the Heritage Collection will include Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and Assassin’s Creed 3.

The official price has not been announced, but some listings are starting to pop up in the neighborhood of $70/£40, which isn’t outrageous for five games plus DLC. Still, at that price you’re paying a premium for the packaging and whatever extras they throw in there, and we have no idea what those extras might be.

Of course, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag lands on November 19. Technically speaking, I suppose gamers brand-new to the series could pound through the first five games in time for the launch of Black Flag, but only if they’re willing to give up showering and eating. Still, die-hard fans might appreciate having the games and their individual DLCs all in one tidy package.

I'm probably not alone in thinking pirates deserve more beyond thick accents, Johnny Depp, and one seriously overrated Disneyland ride. After all, they're one-third of geekdom's holy trinity along with zombies and ninjas, and Sid Meier's Pirates is perhaps their best adventure on the PC so far that doesn't dive too far overboard with swashbuckling stereotypes. Ubisoft wants to pull off the same thing in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, a naval-warfare-themed entry in the franchise born out of "clamor from the fans for a pirate game." Speaking to MCV, Lead Content Manager Carsten Myhill says Black Flag's goal is to "redefine piracy in entertainment."

"It’s not easy," he adds. "It takes a very talented team, a lot of experience, and great tech. It’s one thing having good naval combat, but combining that with good boarding and land-based gameplay in a seamless way is hard to do."

Myhill says pulling off piratical personality means "staying away from clichés" and showing the seafaring raiders in a harsher light. "We're avoiding things like walking the plank, parrots on the shoulder, and hooks for hands," he explains. "We're giving pirates the 'HBO reality' treatment. And that allows us to redefine piracy in entertainment. No longer is it for kids."

Black Flag's pirates won't mess around with theatrics, apparently, but they still seem just fine dressing as foppishly as possible. We've got more info on lead character Edward Kenway's assassineering across the tropical seas in our preview.

The hero of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (already truncated to AssFlag in office lingo) makes a bid to become the loudest assassin yet in the box art Ubisoft put out today. He is wearing FOUR guns. He's wearing his "hidden" blade on the outside of his sleeve. He has woven a flag with the Assassin order logo on it, and then, because it wasn't piratey enough, plopped a skull in there for good measure. Because that's what you do, isn't it, when you're a pirate? You whack a skull on it.

Assassin's Creed 4 is about pirates, and boats, and islands, and killing bad men. All will be revealed on Monday when details banks burst and information flows through the webways, as hot and saucy as the regurgitated rum of a green sailor's first hurl. Those of us in the office that played Assassin's Creed 3 really enjoyed the sea bits, which bodes well for this latest outing. We'll have preview here for you on Monday, and we've squared away four pages in the next issue of PC Gamer, too. Here be ye box art ye blaggards.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: calling all Tapirs, please be on guard. Ubi have revised their yearly profit estimates up to somewhere between 90 and 100 million Euros after better-than-expected sales late last year, and are going to need a much bigger wallet.

Gamasutra report that Assassin's Creed 3 shifted 12 million copies in the meatspace and online which is 70% more than AssCreed: Revelations managed. Far Cry 3 sold 4.5 million. A "much higher-than-expected performance," which means "fans certainly won't have to wait four more years for the next Far Cry."

The next Assassin's Creed was also briefly mentioned. It'll apparently take place in a fresh setting and star a new hero. So much for Connor, then. Requiescat in pace, brusque angry hatchet-dude. I will remember you always, apart from your face and everything you said and did.

That's all the info for now, but there's still time to honour Haiku Friday with a brief but moving summation of all our hopes and dreams for Far Cry 4.

Assassin's Creed 3 is arriving a bit late on PC, but according to comments from the Ubisoft team in a recent Reddit AMA, it'll come with some extra visual polish. DirectX 11 features like tessellation will smooth out those polygons and we can look forward to textures that, in some cases, will be four times the resolution of the console versions.

Community developer "UbiGabe" also says that "when PC launches, it will include ALL of the console patches out at the time (so, that includes any patches we might be releasing in between now and PC launch). In addition, PC has a special patch designed to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible."

Textures will be "double-res in most cases, but quadruple in some," and there will be "some other shader improvements that will have an impact, but aren't all that sexy to enumerate in a reddit post." UbiGabe should drop us a line, NOTHING IS TOO UNSEXY FOR US.

But seriously, other important issues were raised during the Q&A, like the vital question "Do you think Connor would rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?" to which the predictable response was "I think Connor's speed and size would prove to be the difference maker in the battle against the mob of horse-ducks so I lean towards them."

This brilliant Assassin's Creed Kinect April Fool video also came up again, which is all the excuse I need to embed it on my forehead to amuse everyone I meet today. Also here:

After the appearance of listings for in-game "Erudito Credits" yesterday, Ubisoft have confirmed that there will be microtransactions in Assassin's Creed 3.

"The Erudito Credits are a new way of unlocking content in Assassin's Creed 3's Multiplayer," Ubisoft told Eurogamer. "People who have little time can use Erudito Credits as a shortcut to unlock game items from level 1 to 50 (excluding Prestige levels and relics rewards). This is not mandatory, all items sold in Erudito Credits are also available in Abstergo Credits and can be unlocked through normal progression like previous years."

Assassin's Creed 3 isn't the first full price game to contain optional microtransactions, boxes can be bought in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode to unlock new weapons and classes a bit quicker, though it's a bit of a lottery. It sounds as though this system will be a more straightforward 'pay for credits buy the item' deal though it won't be clear how expensive those upgrades are until the game goes live.

Assassin's Creed 3 goes on sale today on consoles in the US. It's out on November 20 in the US and November 23 in the UK on PC. The console launch means there is a new launch trailer, which is different from last week's launch trailer, in that it's longer in order to fit in more hitting with axes.

Console players will get their paws on Assassin's Creed 3 next week. We'll have to wait until November 20 in the US and November 23 in Europe, sadly, but you can absorb a 90 second montage of the action courtesy of the launch trailer, which features fighting on the high seas, some great big battle scenes, a bit of tragic back story and one particularly cruel groin kick.

Find out whether your rig will run AC3 with the help of these system requirements and get a sense for how the sequel's shaping up with an account of some adventures in the wilderness in our Assassin's Creed 3 hands-on.

The two British soldiers guarding the riverbank don't know it, but there's an assassin in the water plotting their demise. I'd spotted the pair from half a mile away, while perched in a tree atop a cliff. It took less than five minutes to vault through the canopies, avoid a pair of fighting stags and cross the river under cover of a swathe of low reeds. Now I'm right behind them, wondering how to make the kill.

I've been wandering the wild frontier areas of Assassin's Creed 3 for about fifteen minutes. I've already shot a Racoon, fled a bear, discovered a rustic British tavern and dodged a marching platoon of redcoats. The forest feels huge. There's room to observe prey from the tree tops and plan an attack. For the first time in an Assassin's Creed game, I actually feel like an assassin.

The two guards are standing on a small wooden platform a few metres into the river, which has given me room to swim behind them. I could retreat to a treetop and kill them with my bow easily enough. I could hide in a stack of leaves and whistle one over to take him out silently. Instead, I decide to improvise.

I clamber out of the water right behind the man on the right. I stand at his shoulder dripping water for a few moments. He doesn't react. Oh. They must be friendly.

I take another step forward to say hello. The guard turns and screams wordlessly. He raises his musket, backs away and falls into the water. I never see him again.

His friend is more competent. He takes a couple of steps back and brings his musket to bear. A yellow icon appears above his head. Ah, that'll be the "I'm about to shoot your ass" icon. I charge him with my tomahawk. At a distance of about five feet, he shoots me in the leg. At a distance of two feet I activate Assassin's Creed 3's new "running assassination" ability and Connor slams the Tomahawk into the guard's midriff. It's over.

That couldn't have gone much worse. I loot the guard's corpse, throw it into the river and hope that there are no Templars in the bushes witnessing the debacle. The gunshot doesn't seem to have damaged me much, so I'm free to continue up the long trail towards Boston. I need to talk to a man about some tea.

I want to linger. The forest feels like fresh territory for Assassin's Creed. The new engine does a fine job of realising the dense foliage and haphazard layouts of the colonial wilderness, and its various elements cleverly mimic familiar scenic staples of former Creed games. Large bushes act much like hay bails, providing a place to hide and a position from which to stealthily assassinate passing soldiers. Cracks snaking up cliff faces signify useful climbing points and, much like convenient staircase box stacks in towns, splintered, half toppled tree trunks offer a quick route to an elevated plane. In a city, that means rooftops, in the wilderness, it's an organic canopy of twisting branches.

Associate producer Julien Laferriere refers to these signifying marks as a "clue code" for the player. It was one of the two major design challenges facing Ubisoft when they committed to woodland environments. The other was animation. Connor glides through the treetops with a grace that's both superhuman and somehow entirely believable. A revamped animation system was needed to make Connor's tree-skulking look realistic.

"We redid the climbing system because of the forest, to support more organic surfaces, and that translated into the cities," Laferriere explains. "We have a much smaller climbing grid so we can have differently placed elements on the façade of buildings. We booted up Brotherhood last week and the climbing had changed so much we didn't realise."

The wilderness zones feel like a test bed for new technology and ideas that may foreshadow greater changes for the series on the far side of the next-gen console divide. I didn't encounter any quest markers during my time in the forest, but there was always something happening. I'd have to take a long way around a glade on account of a family of bears, or I'd find animal tracks for Connor to examine. "A rabbit ate flowers here"a pop-up message informed me after one such stop. Connor is a freakishly good tracker.

At one point a procession of redcoats marched past, guarding a wagon full of supplies. An objective marker popped up inviting me to kill the troops and loot the wagon. I parked my horse further down the road and ambushed them from a nearby leaf pile. The guards fell quickly, and I made away with some meat and a fine sabre dropped by the redcoat officer.

Boston, by contrast, felt much more familiar. You can visit elevated viewpoints to reveal local side quests and points of interest. Main objective markers hover above cutscene trigger, ready to propel Connor into the next stage of the story. If you run afoul of the authorities, you can reduce your notoriety by bribing town criers and tearing down wanted posters. This is the Assassin's Creed you know well.

Connor's long term target in Boston is a man making moves to sell the land upon which his people live. In the short term, there's plenty of unrest to deal with. It's 1773 and Boston's streets crackle with unresolved tension. Protesters are in the streets in force, loudly decrying the influence of the East India Company. Tax collectors tussle with disgruntled citizens and marching redcoats pass through Boston's wide open thoroughfares, menacing citizens who look as though they're about to launch into a full-scale riot.

In terms of scale, young Boston can't hope to stand up to the spectacle of Rome and Constantinople. Its landmarks can't match the coliseum for grandeur, but it feels spacious, rugged and busy. As Laferriere notes, "Boston itself at the time was a pretty big – it was bustling, there were famous landmarks that you can still find today like the Faneuil Hall and the churches."

Much of Brotherhood was about restoring Rome to its former glory, which was established long before Ezio's arrival. Assassin's Creed 3's story is set in the formative years of an emerging superpower. Ubisoft hope that the defining events surrounding the civil war will infuse AC3's smaller townships with enough drama to make up for the lack of staggering monuments. "Instead of witnessing the glories of the past, as in Rome, you get to live the events as they happen."

It's fun to watch Assassin's Creed weave its paranoid assassin vs. Templar plot around historical figures and events. After half an hour in Boston I found myself running around a cargo ship, throwing boxes of tea into the dark port waters as British soldiers charged up the gangplanks. Traditional depictions of the Boston tea party neglect to show the hooded assassin diving off the ship's rigging with an axe. More's the pity. Connor's a spectacular fighter.

Altair fought like a snake, killing in a single deadly blow. Ezio was a dancer, outwitting opponents with shimmering swordplay. Connor is like a bear. A bear with an axe. He uses his weapons to bludgeon his way past enemy defences. Sometimes he'll use his off-hand knife to land distraction blows ahead of a fatal Tomahawk strike. Sometimes he'll use his Tomahawk to land distraction blows that let him get behind and break their neck. He's the series' most dangerous fighter yet.

You need a tougher hero in an era of gunpowder. Muskets are everywhere. In large fights, some opponents will back out of range and form a gun line several metres away. The camera pulls back moments before they fire, giving you a chance to activate a contextual "use meat shield" ability. This lets Connor grab a nearby enemy and spin him into a hostage grab a moment before the line fires, filling the hapless guard with shot. It takes a minute or so for redcoats to reload. More than enough time for Connor to dash past their bayonets and forcefully deny a second volley.

This is the most current Assassin's Creed yet, in terms of setting and engine tech. That big number "3" seems to demand some great step forward for the series, but this is no leap of faith. Part of me wants Assassin's Creed to go wild and embrace the experimental spirit of those forest areas, but it's a lengthy series with many expectant fans. "It's a matter of balancing what fans like and innovation. That's our take on it," says Laferriere. "The forest is purely new, purely fresh. How can we apply that strategy to the city as well by not completely changing everything?"

Assassin's Creed 3 is out on PC on November 20 in the US and November 23 in Europe.

The two British soldiers guarding the riverbank don't know it, but there's an assassin in the water plotting their demise. I'd spotted the pair from half a mile away, while perched in a tree atop a cliff. It took less than five minutes to vault through the canopies, avoid a pair of fighting stags and cross the river under cover of a swathe of low reeds. Now I'm right behind them, wondering how to make the kill.

I've been wandering the wild frontier areas of Assassin's Creed 3 for about fifteen minutes. I've already shot a Racoon, fled a bear, discovered a rustic British tavern and dodged a marching platoon of redcoats. The forest feels huge. There's room to observe prey from the tree tops and plan an attack. For the first time in an Assassin's Creed game, I actually feel like an assassin.

The two guards are standing on a small wooden platform a few metres into the river, which has given me room to swim behind them. I could retreat to a treetop and kill them with my bow easily enough. I could hide in a stack of leaves and whistle one over to take him out silently. Instead, I decide to improvise.

I clamber out of the water right behind the man on the right. I stand at his shoulder dripping water for a few moments. He doesn't react. Oh. They must be friendly.

I take another step forward to say hello. The guard turns and screams wordlessly. He raises his musket, backs away and falls into the water. I never see him again.

His friend is more competent. He takes a couple of steps back and brings his musket to bear. A yellow icon appears above his head. Ah, that'll be the "I'm about to shoot your ass" icon. I charge him with my tomahawk. At a distance of about five feet, he shoots me in the leg. At a distance of two feet I activate Assassin's Creed 3's new "running assassination" ability and Connor slams the Tomahawk into the guard's midriff. It's over.

That couldn't have gone much worse. I loot the guard's corpse, throw it into the river and hope that there are no Templars in the bushes witnessing the debacle. The gunshot doesn't seem to have damaged me much, so I'm free to continue up the long trail towards Boston. I need to talk to a man about some tea.

I want to linger. The forest feels like fresh territory for Assassin's Creed. The new engine does a fine job of realising the dense foliage and haphazard layouts of the colonial wilderness, and its various elements cleverly mimic familiar scenic staples of former Creed games. Large bushes act much like hay bails, providing a place to hide and a position from which to stealthily assassinate passing soldiers. Cracks snaking up cliff faces signify useful climbing points and, much like convenient staircase box stacks in towns, splintered, half toppled tree trunks offer a quick route to an elevated plane. In a city, that means rooftops, in the wilderness, it's an organic canopy of twisting branches.

Associate producer Julien Laferriere refers to these signifying marks as a "clue code" for the player. It was one of the two major design challenges facing Ubisoft when they committed to woodland environments. The other was animation. Connor glides through the treetops with a grace that's both superhuman and somehow entirely believable. A revamped animation system was needed to make Connor's tree-skulking look realistic.

"We redid the climbing system because of the forest, to support more organic surfaces, and that translated into the cities," Laferriere explains. "We have a much smaller climbing grid so we can have differently placed elements on the façade of buildings. We booted up Brotherhood last week and the climbing had changed so much we didn't realise."

The wilderness zones feel like a test bed for new technology and ideas that may foreshadow greater changes for the series on the far side of the next-gen console divide. I didn't encounter any quest markers during my time in the forest, but there was always something happening. I'd have to take a long way around a glade on account of a family of bears, or I'd find animal tracks for Connor to examine. "A rabbit ate flowers here"a pop-up message informed me after one such stop. Connor is a freakishly good tracker.

At one point a procession of redcoats marched past, guarding a wagon full of supplies. An objective marker popped up inviting me to kill the troops and loot the wagon. I parked my horse further down the road and ambushed them from a nearby leaf pile. The guards fell quickly, and I made away with some meat and a fine sabre dropped by the redcoat officer.

Boston, by contrast, felt much more familiar. You can visit elevated viewpoints to reveal local side quests and points of interest. Main objective markers hover above cutscene trigger, ready to propel Connor into the next stage of the story. If you run afoul of the authorities, you can reduce your notoriety by bribing town criers and tearing down wanted posters. This is the Assassin's Creed you know well.

Connor's long term target in Boston is a man making moves to sell the land upon which his people live. In the short term, there's plenty of unrest to deal with. It's 1773 and Boston's streets crackle with unresolved tension. Protesters are in the streets in force, loudly decrying the influence of the East India Company. Tax collectors tussle with disgruntled citizens and marching redcoats pass through Boston's wide open thoroughfares, menacing citizens who look as though they're about to launch into a full-scale riot.

In terms of scale, young Boston can't hope to stand up to the spectacle of Rome and Constantinople. Its landmarks can't match the coliseum for grandeur, but it feels spacious, rugged and busy. As Laferriere notes, "Boston itself at the time was a pretty big – it was bustling, there were famous landmarks that you can still find today like the Faneuil Hall and the churches."

Much of Brotherhood was about restoring Rome to its former glory, which was established long before Ezio's arrival. Assassin's Creed 3's story is set in the formative years of an emerging superpower. Ubisoft hope that the defining events surrounding the American revolution will infuse AC3's smaller townships with enough drama to make up for the lack of staggering monuments. "Instead of witnessing the glories of the past, as in Rome, you get to live the events as they happen."

It's fun to watch Assassin's Creed weave its paranoid assassin vs. Templar plot around historical figures and events. After half an hour in Boston I found myself running around a cargo ship, throwing boxes of tea into the dark port waters as British soldiers charged up the gangplanks. Traditional depictions of the Boston tea party neglect to show the hooded assassin diving off the ship's rigging with an axe. More's the pity. Connor's a spectacular fighter.

Altair fought like a snake, killing in a single deadly blow. Ezio was a dancer, outwitting opponents with shimmering swordplay. Connor is like a bear. A bear with an axe. He uses his weapons to bludgeon his way past enemy defences. Sometimes he'll use his off-hand knife to land distraction blows ahead of a fatal Tomahawk strike. Sometimes he'll use his Tomahawk to land distraction blows that let him get behind and break their neck. He's the series' most dangerous fighter yet.

You need a tougher hero in an era of gunpowder. Muskets are everywhere. In large fights, some opponents will back out of range and form a gun line several metres away. The camera pulls back moments before they fire, giving you a chance to activate a contextual "use meat shield" ability. This lets Connor grab a nearby enemy and spin him into a hostage grab a moment before the line fires, filling the hapless guard with shot. It takes a minute or so for redcoats to reload. More than enough time for Connor to dash past their bayonets and forcefully deny a second volley.

This is the most current Assassin's Creed yet, in terms of setting and engine tech. That big number "3" seems to demand some great step forward for the series, but this is no leap of faith. Part of me wants Assassin's Creed to go wild and embrace the experimental spirit of those forest areas, but it's a lengthy series with many expectant fans. "It's a matter of balancing what fans like and innovation. That's our take on it," says Laferriere. "The forest is purely new, purely fresh. How can we apply that strategy to the city as well by not completely changing everything?"

Assassin's Creed 3 is out on PC on November 20 in the US and November 23 in Europe.

In interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Stephanie Perotti, Ubisoft’s worldwide director for online games, has said that the company has decided to remove the need for a permanent connection to play its PC titles.

In fact, she claims the decision was made way back in June, after which point Ubi’s singleplayer games have only required a one-time activation upon install.

Ubisoft’s approach to DRM has been widely lambasted by gamers, partly because of the inconvenience for the consumer, but mostly because it often didn’t seem to work, dropping connection to the server mid-game, booting you out and erasing progress. And now, finally, it seems Ubisoft have heeded this wail of despair, with Perotti explicitly confirming that the singleplayer component of Assassin’s Creed 3 will not require any online connection.

She also suggests Ubisoft will be doing more to get their games onto PC quicker - so good news all round. We’ve got a man in the field, chinwagging with Ubi bigwigs as we speak, so we’ll be bringing you more news on Ubisoft’s plans for PC, and specifically their intentions with uPlay, very soon.